In the days before my iPhone and iPad, our family always had a calendar attached to the kitchen wall, showing everything that was going on for the 6 members of our household.

However, once I got my first iPhone and started using the calendar on that (sync'd with the calendar on my computer), it became quite a chore to keep the physical wall calendar 'in sync' with electronic calendar.

This meant that there was no longer an up to date calendar visible to the rest of the family (should they, on the rare occasion, want to show some interest in what was going on - rather than just relying on me telling them what was going on.)

For a while, I tried regularly printing off the month's calendar from my computer and Blutacking it to the wall.

After upgrading my original model iPad, this old iPad then became our electronic version of the 'wall calendar'. It now sits on the kitchen bench all the time, serving 3 key functions: it's our address book, wall calendar and recipe-lookup device!

This works really well, as anyone who wants to know what is going on when can look up my calendar on this iPad. (Except when someone steals its charger or unplugs it, and lets its battery run flat - which happens regularly!).

But, what if you want to be able to share certain events so that they appear in your partner's calendar, or perhaps in your kids' calendars on their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch?

iOS 8 introduced a new feature for families called Family Sharing. This offers one way of sharing a calendar with the entire family. This will be covered in a separate handy hint.

We don't actually use this method of sharing calendars, because I don't want to share all events with all family members. I want a calendar that I share with my husband, and one or more others that I share with my kids - each with the purpose of communicating specific events to them (since they are not interested in seeing all family events in their calendars).

In fact, my eldest daughter has set up a calendar that she has shared with me, that tells me when she has 'booked me in' to be her taxi driver! Isn't that wonderful?

Find out how you can set up shared calendar's in this handy hint, available any time for iTandCoffee members.

This hint is broken into two parts - one that looks at setting up multiple calendars on your iPad and iPhone, and the other that looks at how to then share individual calendars with one or more other iCloud users. Each part offers a downloadable, easy to read PDF that is extracted from iTandCoffee's full guide about the Calendar App on the iPad and iPhone.

What do you do when that document that you have been working on for days - perhaps weeks -suddenly loses all its content. Something you did resulted in the loss of every single word that you had written, and left you with an empty file. Or perhaps you deleted the wrong file.

We all know that feeling. The sick feeling in the pit of your stomach as you contemplate having to start all over again.

This very situation arose for an iTandCoffee client just this week. On opening the file containing her 'work in progress' autobiography, she found an empty file - everything, apparently, gone!

Fortunately for this client, we had only the week earlier moved all of her important files to her Dropbox. (She had previously set up Dropbox on her computer, but had never actually used it.)

Why was this significant?

One the most fantastic things about Dropbox (apart from the fact that it shares your folders and files with all your devices) is that it keeps previously saved versions of your files - even those you have deleted.

This meant that we could retrieve the last version of the file that she saved before she 'wiped' her content. While she did lose her unsaved edits, this was so much better than having to go back to an older separate file that she had saved one month earlier!

The ability to easily retrieve lost files - or access your files if something happens to the device that you normally use - is something that I would never be without. Other services offer similar cloud storage and version management, but Dropbox is my favourite at the moment.

So, tell your student children about this - they need to be sure that they have a 'backup plan' for the school work and Dropbox is an easy option to set up and use. And think about setting up Dropbox for yourself (if you haven't already).

If you have ever travelled overseas with your iPad or iPhone, you may have been frustrated to find that you could not catch up on your favourite ABC programs on ABC iView, or watch the ABC News via the ABC app.

This will have been due to the fact that online catchup TV providers block internet users who are accessing the service from outside Australia.

So, how do you get around this?

Well, you do what I have finally got around to doing. You sign up to a VPN (Virtual Private Network) service.

Here is an article that reviews several such providers.

Once you have created your and account with your VPN service, you install and sign in to this service on each of your devices.

You then choose which 'country' you want to be 'connected to' by choosing a VPN server that your service provider offers in that country. (Different service providers will offer different countries and server locations within those countries.)

Not only will this allow you to access Australian content when you are not in Australia, you will also be able to access overseas content that is normally only available to locals.

And the best part when travelling (or even when using a public WiFi network here in Australia)?

Your privacy is protected when you use any public WiFi network, since the VPN creates something called an 'encrypted link' for any communications between your device and the internet. This will prevent anyone from 'stealing' your information - something that can happen to unsuspecting technology users at airports, in hotels and in cafes.

If you plan on travelling in future and taking along your technology, this is something that you should definitely consider.

On occasion when using Safari on my iPad or iPhone, I find a web page that has some content of interest.

I could just save the whole web page to my Evernote (which is usually what I would do), but I have found an app that makes it really easy to grab just a small part of the web page and save it as an image - either to my Camera Roll or to some other app like my Evernote. I can even 'draw on' the image before I save it.

It is called Awesome Screenshot for Safari, a free app for iPhone and iPad that includes an 'Extension' for Safari that can be accessed from the 'Share' option when you are using Safari.

Watch this video to see how it works.

If you have downloaded and installed Awesome Screenshots, but you don't see the 'Screenshots' option in your Share menu, it may be because it has not yet been 'enabled' as one of your list of 'Activities'. (Also make sure that you are running iOS 8.)

Just tap on the More option in the second row on options and 'turn on' ScreenShot, then tap Done (top right)

I just saw this recharging station in an email from the online technology store, eStore.

The price they are selling it for right now really is very low - so click on the the image to see further details and, if you are interested, to purchase.

Assuming they have not run out of stock, iTandCoffee will be grabbing one today! If any local clients/subscribers would like me to order one for you as well, let me know. (You would need to pick from me in Camberwell.)

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